Fear the Drowning Deep(80)

“Merciful angels,” Da breathed. He changed direction, paddling back toward the fight.

I leaned over the side of the boat, holding the lantern aloft for Da. “We’re coming!”

The serpent shot around our boat and rose into the sky. Da hesitated, torn between helping Fynn and fleeing to protect his daughters. I elbowed him in the ribs, urging him to keep rowing to Fynn’s aid.

The serpent hadn’t yet spotted us. Fynn was now awake, and he was clawing at the monster’s remaining eye.

“We’re down here!” I yelled. “Jump! Hurry!”

Fynn’s exhausted gaze met mine, and he shook his head. “Bridey,” he coughed. Then he twisted in the serpent’s jaws, digging his fingers deep into the rim of the monster’s eye. The serpent thrashed and howled, but Fynn gouged the eye with a sickening pop.

A deafening wail forced Da, Liss and me to cover our ears. With a bone-chilling screech, the blind serpent dived beneath a swell, Fynn still trapped in its mouth. Water from their violent descent smacked me in the face, masking my tears.

Da moved cautiously toward the spot where the monsters had vanished, paddles cutting through the reddened sea. We sat for several minutes, the boat bobbing on the storm-charged waves in the darkness, but neither Fynn nor the serpent resurfaced. The only sound other than my sobs was the mournful keening of the wind.

“Where is he? Where’s the serpent?” A woman’s rough voice called from a distance. “And the glashtyn boy?”

A blurry speck of light, another lantern hanging from someone else’s boat, headed toward us. Morag, no illusion with her sodden clothes and sea-foam eyes, feebly dug a paddle into the angry sea. In her other hand, she clutched a shining spear.

“What happened?” she demanded, pulling her boat alongside ours. “Fynn—?”

“He’s gone.” Da hung his head. “Whatever he was, he’s with the angels now.” I sobbed harder, and Liss draped an arm across my shoulders.

“And the serpent?”

“It’s down there somewhere.” Da waved a hand at the red stain over the water. “Blind, though, if it’s even still alive.”

“That’s something.” Morag’s gaze shifted to me, and the fire that seemed to animate her sputtered and died. “I’m sorry, girl.” Her voice was thick with unshed tears. “I’m too late. I wish I had a way to bring him back, but the greedy sea claims whatever it can.”

I stared at her, numb with cold and shock and disbelief. “You shouldn’t have come!” The words sounded strange, as though someone else had spoken them. I seemed to be watching everything from a distance, like a spectator at a game of cammag.

“What if the serpent had gotten you, too?”

Despite her intense fear of the sea, she had come ready to do battle. She had come for me, for my family, and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Morag closed her cold, waxy hand over mine. “Don’t worry. We’ll find a way to make things right, you and me. We won’t stop trying until we recover everything the sea has taken from us.”

I squeezed her hand. Words still eluded me.

“Bridey.” Da laid a hand on my back. “We have to go. Liss needs a doctor.”

I nodded, burying my face in Liss’s shoulder. The sea had stolen another piece of my heart, and I couldn’t bear to watch the crimson water churning in our wake. The serpent had won today, but now that Fynn lay beneath the ocean’s dark surface, I would never stop fighting.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR



“Ready, my love?” Da rumbled in my ear, his whiskers scratching my cheek.

Without taking my eyes from the gleaming ocean, I nodded. “Remind me what I’m supposed to do, again.” I gripped the long handle of the dip net with both hands, letting the mesh dangle over the side of the boat.

Da frowned. “It shouldn’t be any different from the last time. Drop the net in the water, and—”

“Da,” I groaned. “I’m teasing.” I plunged the net into the brine.

In the weeks since Fynn’s disappearance, I’d learned how to set a crab trap, how to use dip nets, and how to bait a hook. Looking into the water still made my head swirl, especially when I thought of the creatures hidden in its depths. But I could hold a wriggling fish in my hands and ride in a boat without getting sick.

We sat in silence awhile, Da with two fishing rods and me with the dip net. An early autumn breeze combed my salt-crusted hair as I narrowed my eyes against the glare of the sun. As always, I searched for a sleek black fin, but the only fins jutting out of the water belonged to a school of dolphins.

A week ago, the serpent’s body had washed up near Peel. According to Da, pictures were splashed across newspapers, even reaching Mally in London.

Da took me to see the body one morning, thinking it would help. But as the sightless monstrosity rotted under the summer sun, I wept. I’d somehow convinced myself Fynn would be there, too, but there had been no sightings of a lad matching his description reported.

I wasn’t sure what became of the monster’s carcass after that, nor did I much care. Lugh insisted someone had carved it up for the meat. I pitied the person who found serpent on their plate at suppertime.

Da cleared his throat, and I tore my gaze from the dolphins. “Morag came by the house again this mornin’ while you were helping Liss to her room.” Liss still couldn’t walk unassisted, but she was growing stronger each day with the aid of the healing tonics Morag provided.